Who Practised Lovemagic in Classical Antiquity and in The Late Roman World

Classical Quarterly 50.
2 563-583 (2000) Printed in Great Britain 563
WHO PRACTISED LOVE-MAGIC IN CLASSICAL

ANTIQUITY AND IN THE LATE ROMAN WORLD?
INTRODUCTION
Very soon after I began working on the identity of magic-workers in classical
antiquity, I realized that it was necessary to come to terms with a thesis about
depictions of erotic magic-working in Greek and Roman literature. It asserted that
male writers engaged in a systematic misrepresentation of the realities of magic-
working in portraying erotic magic as an exclusively female preserve; the reality was
that men were the main participants in this form of magic-working. The thesis is
based on the supposition that the truth about erotic magic and the people who
performed it is to be found in the formularies or spell-books preserved in papyrus and
in defixiones. These two sources of information are said to show us that erotic magic
was performed by men and not by the women who are the persons depicted engaging
in love-magic in literature. The scholar who first presented the thesis was the late John
Winkler. A version of it is to be found in Fritz Graf's general account of Greek and
Roman magic.1 There is agreement over what are taken to be the facts, but views
diverge over their interpretation. Winkler appeals to the Freudian notion of denial
and transference to offer an explanation not only of the discrepancy between life and
literature, but of what he took to be the belief held by the young men who cast erotic
spells that the girls who were the objects of their spells were as sexually eager as they
were: men, when overwhelmed by sexual desire for unattainable women, through a
process of denial transfer that feeling to women, whether old or young, whom they
Abbreviations
DTAud A. Audollent, Defixionum tabellae quotquot innotuerunt tarn in graecis Orientis
quam in totius Occidentis partibus praeter atticas in Corpore inscriptionum
atticarum editas (Paris, 1904)
DTWu IG HI (3) = Appendix continens defixionum tabellas in attica regione repertas,
ed. Richard Wunsch (Berlin, 1897)
PGM K. Preisendanz, Papyri graecae magicae: die griechischen Zauberpapyri,
2nd edn rev. by A. Henrichs (Stuttgart, 1973)
SupplMag Supplementum Magicum I, II, ed. Robert W. Daniel and Franco Maltomini,
Abhandlungen der rheinisch-westfdlischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia 16.1-2 (Opladen, 1990)
1
Winkler made his case in his The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender
in Ancient Greece (New York/London, 1990), 71-98, republished in an abbreviated form as 'The
constraints of Eros', in C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink (edd.), Magika Hiera (New York, 1991),
214-43. Graf's book was originally published in French as La Magie dans I'antiquite greco-
romaine (Paris, 1994), then translated into English as Magic in the Ancient World, tr. Franklin
Philip (Cambridge, MA, 1998). There is, however, a revised edition in German: Gottemahe und
Schadenzauber: die Magie in der griechisch-romischen Antike (Munich, 1996). The English
translation will be cited for the sake of convenience. The thesis has encountered some opposition:
the authors, names not given, of the chapter on erotic binding-spells in Curse Tablets and Binding
Spells from the Ancient World, ed. J. G. Gager (New York, 1992), 80; D. Montserrat, Sex and
Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London, 1996), 187; and D. Ogden, 'Binding spells: curse tablets
and voodoo dolls in the Greek and Roman worlds', in The Athlone History of Witchcraft and
Magic in Europe II: Ancient Greece and Rome (London, 1999), 63-7 hold that Winkler has
overstated his case.
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564 M. W. DICKIE
fondly imagine suffer the same intense sexual longings as themselves.2 The long and
the short of Winkler's thesis is that the male authors who portray female erotic
magic-working are all in their own way just as much frustrated sexual fantasists as the
unhappy young men with no outlet for their sexual longings who perform magical
rituals directed at girls asleep in their beds onto whom they project their own tortured
feelings. The women are unobtainable, because they are maidens of the kind who 'are
constantly guarded and watched by their own families and by all the neighbours'.3
Graf accepts Winkler's basic premiss of a discrepancy between literature and life;4
his explanation is somewhat different, but similar in one highly significant respect:
both scholars believe the spells were directed by young men at young women, securely
guarded within the bosoms of their families.5 In Graf's view, the key to understanding
what is going on is competition, that is, a jockeying for social position and
advancement. The erotic binding-spells are then best understood as a manifestation of
the same competitive impulse that gives rise to the binding-spells aimed at rivals in
commerce or in the same calling. In the case of erotic binding-spells, their aim 'is
almost always permanent union, that is, marriage', leading to social advancement.6 In
support of this last point, Graf cites the final phrase of one of the spells in PGM IV,
which, on his interpretation of it, means that what is sought is 'a woman for one's
whole life'.7 Graf does concede that if marriage is the ultimate aim of erotic spells,
then it is curious that no spells have been found aimed at the person who on his
understanding of the social situation underlying the spells would in fact decide whom
the woman married, the father.8
Graf's explanation of why in literature it is 'always the women who perform erotic
magic' is that such tales take magic out of the sphere of men, where it ought to have no
place, since a real man does not use magic to attain his ends.9 If I understand the
explanation, what it means is that men make up stories about women practising erotic
magic, precisely because they know that it is men who in the main engage in such
conduct; they do so to show their disapproval of such a path of conduct and to impress
on their readers the womanishness and weakness of such behaviour. That is
tantamount to saying that there is a didactic and moral purpose to stories in which
women engage in love-magic: they warn men to avoid it, since it belongs to the realm
of women.
The propositions on which the thesis rests need to be subjected to scrutiny. They are:
(i) the recipes in the magical formularies take it for granted that it will be men who will
2
Winkler (n. 1), 90. Endorsed by C. A. Faraone, TAPA 119 (1989), 149-61; S. Johnston, TAPA
125 (1995), 179, n. 3; and D. Martinez in Ritual Power in the Ancient World, ed. M. Meyer and P.
Mirecki (Leiden, 1995), 354-5; with qualifications by H. Versnel in Ansichten griechischer
Rituale: Geburtstag-Symposium fur Walter Burkert, ed. F. Graf (Leipzig, 1998), 257-8 and C. A.
Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 82-5.
3
Winkler (n. 1), p. 90.
4
Graf (n. 1), 185: 'In Theocritus as well as Vergil, or in the elegiac poets, and generally in the
great majority of the literary texts, it is women who practise magic, whether erotic or of another
kind. This situation amounts to an astonishing .reversal of what we find in the epigraphic texts
and the recipes on papyrus.'
5
Ibid., 186.
6
Ibid., 186. Ogden (n. 1), 66 seems to favour Graf's position, but is ultimately non-committal
on the issue.
7
404—5: Kai TO. a<j>po8iotaKa iavrrjs e/creAtaij i) Sztva fier' ifiov, Seiva, els TOV airavra
Xpovov TOV ala>vos.
8
Graf (n. 1), 188. » Ibid., 199.
LOVE-MAGIC IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY 565
10
perform erotic magic; (ii) erotic deflxiones were cast by men and aimed at women; (iii)
the women who are the targets of love-magic are carefully guarded maidens; (iv) the
motives of the men who employ love-magic are either to enjoy the sexual favours of an
otherwise unattainable woman or to better themselves by securing a good marriage; (v)
in literature it is exclusively or almost exclusively women who are portrayed engaging
in love-magic.
In what follows erotic magic should be taken to mean any form of magic intended to
manipulate the sexual behaviour of others. Erotic magic on this understanding
encompasses not only magical rites aimed at bringing a woman or man to the bed of
the person performing them, but also spells cast by persons motivated neither by
sexual longing nor jealousy. A spell cast by a prostitute and intended to turn clients
away from a rival is an erotic spell, even though the motive for casting the spell is not
sexual.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE MAGICAL PAPYRI

The surviving magical formularies containing recipes for erotic spells are with one
exception the products of Late Roman Egypt, although some of the spells in them
may be a good deal older." Whether all of the erotic spells in the formularies had
their origin in Egypt and were devised by magicians in that land is not clear. What is
certain is that such spells circulated throughout the Mediterranean.12 In analysing
erotic spells in formularies it is necessary to bear in mind that the spells were devised
by professional magicians and were then copied out from formularies not by the
persons who speak in the first person in them, but by scribes-cum-magicians
commissioned to perform that task.13 The urgent and very often violent tone in which
the spells are written is, accordingly, a not very satisfactory guide to the state of mind
of young Egyptian, let alone Mediterranean, males.
The scribes-cum-magicians who used the formularies nonetheless adapted the
recipes in them to fit the circumstances of their clients, if not their psychological needs.
What that means amongst other things is that a spell in a formulary in which a man is
the agent or dejigens and a woman the passive party or defixa could be adjusted
mutatis mutandis to suit the needs of a woman seeking a man or a man pursuing
another man. PGM XXXIIa and LXVIII are a case in point. They are both defixiones
written on papyrus that come from Hawara and belong to the second or third century
A.D. The same hand wrote both and used the same formulary, but made appropriate
adjustments: PGM XXXIIa is a homosexual spell directed by one man at another;
PGM LXVIII was written for a woman whose aim it was to draw a man to her.14 The
recipe in the formulary that the scribe used must almost certainly have taken the form:
cos o TW}><JJV avrihiKOS iariv TOV 'HXIOV, OVTCOS Kavoov KapSiav KO.1 <fiv)(rjv Tijy
Seiva rjv CTCKCV 17 Stlva KTX. It gave rise, on the one hand, to: ws 6 Tv<j>wv ..., ovjws
Kavoov . . . tfrvxyv aiiTOV Avcovelov, ov ereKev ' EXevrj KTX. (PGM XXXIIa. 1-4) and,
10
Winkler (n. 1), 90 does concede that there are two exceptions: PGM 1.98, IV.2089.
" The exception is SupplMag 72, a formulary from the Augustan period.
12
On this phenomenon, which he describes as a 'community of superstition in the oikoumene
in the time of the Empire', see D. R. Jordan, Hesperia 63 (1994), 123-5.
13
The hands in which the spells are written show that professionals are at work. Whether the
professionals were lector-priests is another matter. R. Ritner, 'Egyptian magical practice under
the Roman Empire: the demotic spells and their religious context', ANRW2.\%.S (1995), 3354-8
and D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton, 1998), 224-37 assume that they were.
14
I am much indebted to David Jordan for drawing my attention to the pair.
566 M. W. DICKIE
on the Other, to: ws 6 Tv<f><I>v . . . OVTCOS Kal Kavaov [rr/v faxV"] EVTV\OVS o[v
ereKev Zoia\i\x.t), ini avrrj[v 'Ep]t[eav KTX. (.PGM LXVIII. 1-3). It is worth observing
in general that the spells cast in Late Roman Egypt by women to lure men or other
women to them do not greatly differ in form from binding-spells directed by men at
women. Almost all the expressions found in them have their counterparts in spells
aimed by men at women.
That the recipes can be and were adjusted suggests that not too much weight is to be
given to the fact that in most model-spells a man is the agent and a woman the object.
The predominance of the pattern tells us very little about the assumptions made by
those who composed the spell. In all probability, the existence of the pattern has its
origins in the precedence accorded the masculine grammatical gender in Greek. That
supposition is supported by a formulary (PGM XXXVI, fourth century A.D.) in which
a spell, specifically advertised as being good no matter whether it is a man acting
against a woman or a woman against a man, is laid out as if the woman was the victim
and the man the one who inflicted the suffering. We are first told that it is a most
excellent fire-spell than which none is mightier (efxirvpov fieXnoTov, ov ixit,ov ovSev
70) and then that it brings men to women and women to men and causes maidens to
come bounding out of their homes (ayi Se dvSpas ywe^lv Kal yvveKas avSpeaiv Kal
napOevovs eKn-qSav oiKoOev 71). But in spelling out what the operant should do the
text proceeds as if it were only a question of a man attracting a woman:
Xajitbv âprijv Kadapov ypd<f>e aip.ari ovita TO. imoKip.eva ovofiara Kal TO £WI8IOV, Kal
fiaXwv ovaiav i^s dtXus yvvaiKos. (71-4)
Take a clean sheet of paper and write the following names and inscribe the following figure
using the blood of an ass and throw on to it something belonging to the woman you want.
The performer is then told to put gum on the paper, so that it may be attached to the
sudatorium in the baths. He is advised that he will be amazed, but warned that he
should watch out, lest he receive a heavy blow. The text of what is to be written on the
sheet of paper follows. It is one of the standard prayers found in such spells. The prayer
is phrased as if it too concerned only a man drawing a woman to him:
d>S vp.(is KaUade Kal nvpovade, OVTWS Kal 17 '{"'XV' V KapSia rijj Seiva, ijy er€K(v r) heiva,
€coy av eXOrj <f>i\ovoa ip.€ TOV Selva Kal Tqv dTqXvKTjv (j>vaiv TT\ dpaeviKJj fiov KoXXr/arj.
(80-3)
As you burn and are consumed with fire, let the same thing happen to the heart and soul of
such-and-such a woman, whom so-and-so bore, until she comes in love to me being so-and-so
that she may join her female parts to my male parts.
There is a similar pattern observable in a recipe for an attraction-spell in a formulary
(PGM IV1495-1595). It requires the burning of myrrh, which is to be invoked as if a
demonic force that roasts and compels persons (generalizing masc. pi.) who deny Eros
to feel love (17 <f>pvyovaa Kal avayKaôvaa </>iXeiv rovs firj -npoaTroiovpiivovs TOV
"Epuna. 1500-2). Despite the generalizing use of the masculine gender, the model for
the spell itself is written as if for a man who would dispatch the burning myrrh to enter
and scorch a woman, until she was brought to his side (1505-95).
PGM XXXVI is by no means the only formulary to contain a recipe that explicitly
says it can be used to draw a woman to a man or vice versa. Another does the same
thing, recommending that the name of the Sun be uttered three times, and boasts that
it brings a woman to a man and a man to a woman in a way that is simply amazing
(ayei yvvaiKa dv8pl Kal avSpa yvvaiKi ware 9avp,doai PGM XIII.24—6). Another
spell-book has a recipe entitled IT[d]pe8pos "Epws, in which Eros is summoned to be
the helper or familiar of the performer (PGM XII. 14-95). In the second and third
prayers prescribed, to be uttered over a complex sacrifice, the performer is to call on
the Kosmokrator to turn all women to him in love, giving his name as so-and-so, if he
is a man, or so-and-so, if a woman (TTOI-ÔOV oTpe'<f>eo0[ai Trav^Tas avQpwirovs TE
Kal TT&oas ywaiKas inl \e\pwTa fiov, TOV Seiva (rj rrjs Seiva) 60-1).
One of the recipes in PGM IV has a different pattern from the one just noted: before
the model-incantation and any accompanying actions needed to make it effective are
set out, the application of the spell is described; in three instances the masculine
singular gender is used to refer to the persons it is said to draw, but in spelling out what
has to be said to make it effective the example given is always of a woman with name
to be supplied being drawn to a man with name to be supplied.15 There is yet another
spell in the same formulary (PGM IV) which, although it does not specify the sex of
the party whom it draws, renders bed-ridden through sickness, sends a dream to, binds
down or summons a dream from (dyei 8e Kal KaraKXLvei Kal oveipoTrofinei xal
Karexei xal oveipanrjTei 2076-8), does, however, command the demon summoned as
helper to go to where the woman or the man who is the object of the magic dwells, but
proceeds only to bid the demon to bring a woman, name to be supplied, to a man,
name to be supplied (nopevov, OTTOV KdToi/cef 178c (77 oaSe), Kal a£ov ainrjv TTpos
ifxe TOV Seiva 2089-91).
Finally, there is a recipe in a very early formulary of the Augustan Age that would
most appropriately be used by a woman, but which allows for the possibility of its use
by a man; grammatical gender is hopelessly confused throughout. The spell consists in
anointing the face with myrrh, while invoking myrrh as the myrrh with which Isis
anointed herself when she went to the bosom of Orisis and which gave her x<*P's- on
that day (SupplMag 2.72.ii.l—25). Since the mythical paradigm has a woman anoint-
ing herself to make herself more attractive in the eyes of a man, the presumption must
be that the spell was intended primarily for the use of women. Yet, in the instructions
for the spell, participles in the masculine nominative are used (apas, Xeycov 1; XafSwv
4), but a second invocation in the spell of Isis covers the possibility that either a man or
a woman might be its object (TOV Seiva rj rr/v Seiva 7). On the other hand, in the rest
of the prayer that is to be uttered it is a man who is being pursued (nepl TOV Seiva 11;
avros Se /j,e <f>evyei. 12; TOV Seiva 21, 22). The simplest explanation for the confusion
is that recipes for spells tend to be written in the masculine gender, even when they
would most appropriately be used by a woman.
The main conclusion to be drawn from our examination of the formularies is that
the authors of such spells do not necessarily assume that only women are to be the
object of their spells. The likely explanation is that the use of the masculine gram-
matical gender is merely a convention for writing out as economically as possible spells
that may be used equally well by either sex. It is possible to conclude with some
confidence that in Late Roman Egypt those who copied out the model-spells for
spell-books did so in the belief that some of their spells might be used by women. They
15
1: (a) Sl<f>os AapSdvov. . . KAIWI yap Kal ayei ijivxqv dvriKpvs 0$ av BeXrjs, Xeywv TOV
\6yov Kal on KXIVW rf/v I/IVXV TOV Seiva (1716-22); (b) eTriarpeifiov TIJV <l>vxqv TTJS Seiva els
ip.e TOV Seiva, "va fie 4"-Xfj, "va fiov epa, iva fioi Soi TO. ev rais xepolv eavrqs (1806-10); (c)
Kal eXdwv oifie eiy TT/V OIKIOV ij? jSouAei (1852—4). 2: (a) eoTiv yap Kaprepov Xiav xai
avvTTe'pf}Xr)TOV, TTOIOVV irpos iravTas avdrjixepov (\%Ti—5);(b)efra avoiâs rqv Bvpav eupijcreis
irapa. TCUJ Bvpais TJV Xeyeis (1906-8); (c) a/jov ftoi TTJV Seiva T17? Seiva (1915). 3: (a) OKexrr)
em8vfji.aTos aeXr/viaKov ayovaa aoxerovs Kal avovaidoTOVS p.ovorniepovs (2441-4); (b)
PdSiaov irpos TTJV Seiva Kal jSdaTof ov avrrjs TOV VTTVOV Kal 80s avTrj Kavaiv >]>vxf)s (2446-8).
568 M. W. DICKIE
were, as it turns out, not deluded: women in Late Roman Egypt, as we shall see, did
1
engage in erotic magic.
AT WHAT WOMEN WERE EROTIC SPELLS IN THE

FORMULARIES DIRECTED?
The next question to be addressed is whether the users of the spells were lovelorn
young men unable to gain access to maidens whose chastity was carefully protected
by their watchful families and neighbours or were perhaps young men, not so
lovelorn, but looking to better themselves by an advantageous marriage with girls
from good families. If we look at the recipe in PGM IV entitled i>iXTpoKard8eafios
and the five defixiones which used as their template either the recipe in PGM IV or
one very like it, the indications are that the men for whom the recipe was copied out
were intent neither on seducing sheltered virgins nor on securing a wife of good
family, but had rather different goals in mind. All five copies depart from their model
or (more likely) models in ways that are quite revealing. Two of the defixiones come
from Oxyrhynchos and are directed at the same woman {SupplMag 49, 50), one
is from a cemetery at Arsinoe (SupplMag 46), one perhaps from Antinoopolis
(SupplMag 47), and the last is of unknown provenance (SupplMag 48). The model-
spell calls on the demon-helper to betake himself to every place, every street or block
and every house, there to bring and bind down the woman (v-naye els -n&vra TOTTOV
Kal els TTOV a.fj.<f>oSov KO.1 els ndaav oiVi'av PGM IV.348-9). All of the defixiones
except the pair from Oxyrhynchos follow the model more or less exactly. The two
spells from Oxyrhynchos, which are aimed by a certain Theodoras at a woman named
Matrona, broaden the scope of the search even further by adding to the list 'to every
tavern' (els TTSLV KanrjXiov SupplMag 49.19, 50.19). Substantial variation occurs a
little further on in the spell. The model-spell prays that the woman not enjoy vaginal
or anal intercourse and that she should do nothing else contributing to pleasure with
any Other m a n (fir/ Pivr)9^Tu>, fi-q nvyioBr/Tco, fjLTjSe Trpos rjhovrjv Troirj[o\q fj.er'
dXXov dvSpos PGMTV.351-2). One of the Oxyrhynchos-spells lacks this tricolon; the
other adds fellation (/HI) [Xai]Kdarf) to the list of sexual activities the woman is not to
perform and expands and clarifies the final element: the woman is not to fulfil the
pleasures of love with another, nor have union with any other man (fi[r) i]K -qSovrjs
d<f>poSiaiaKov enireXeari /xed' irepov, fj.r) [dA]Aaj dvrpl ovveXdis SupplMag
49.21-3).16 The spell from the area of Antinoopolis does not depart in any significant
detail from the model (SupplMag 47.8-9); the one from Arsinoe adds fellation to the
sexual activities that are specified (jiri XeiKaor) SupplMag 46.9). n The spell of
unknown provenance adheres to the model, adding only that the woman should do
nothing that contributes to the pleasure of another youth or another man (erepw
veavtoKw rj aXXw dvSpi SupplMag 48.8). Whoever it is who introduces the
departures from the model does so because he or she wishes to be precise where the
model is too general or because he or she has a particular concern in mind. One
imagines that the scribes-cum-magicians who copied out defixiones did not make
substantial alterations on their own authority, but only after scribe and client had
16
David Jordan per litteras tells me that, so far he can see, the form of XaiKaêtv visible in line
22 is the passive Xai]Kaadij. If that is the case, I would assume that the pattern of passives
established byfiivrjOijand nvyiaOfi has led to the form.
Cf. SupplMag 38.3—5: iva p.rj SvvTjd^s €T€pq) av&pl ovvfiLyijvai TTWTTOTZ ju-^re f$iv7]9ijvaL
fj.rJTC TTvyiaBijvai ftr/re X-qKat,tiv /xrjSe KO.6' rjhovrjv woiijcnjs JJXB' eralpw db
conferred. It is possible, and indeed likely, that in some cases the person who writes
out the binding-spell is also the person who casts it, but the style of writing found in
Egyptian defixiones points very strongly to their having been copied out by scribes
well-versed in inscribing such texts on lead.
The variations on the model-text in PGM IV tell us how people interpreted it and
for what kind of situations they understood it to be intended. But whatever the
differences, the four different persons who used it were not trying to secure the
undivided attentions and affection of a maiden of good family, but were more
concerned to bring to their beds for their own exclusive enjoyment women who had
been known to gratify the sexual needs of other men. It is not readily apparent why a
man lusting after a maiden, even allowing for the rather greater degree of freedom
allowed Egyptian women, would feel it necessary to avert the danger of her satisfying
the varied sexual tastes of other men and in two cases felt that it was relevant to add
fellation to the list. Nor again is it obvious why a demon should have been expected to
find the woman he is sent in search of in a tavern, which is to say, in a centre for sexual
commerce, if she was a carefully nurtured virgin living in the bosom of her family, or
for all that, why someone should have thought it prudent to make sure that the girl he
longed for was not servicing the sexual appetites of youths and men. There is, in any
case, an explicit clause in the model-spell that tells against the possibility that the
ultimate purpose of the spell was to secure a marriage with a virgin: the demon is asked
to keep the woman from food and drink and not allow her to have a pleasurable
experience with any other man, not even with 'her own man' (/*.•>) idajjs TTJV Seiva
aXXov dvSpos Treipav Xafieiv irpos •qSovr/v, JJ,T)8£ ISIOV dvSpos PGM IV.374-5).18 Who
is the iSios dv-qp with whom the woman is to have no experience? It could be her
husband, but it is equally likely that the phrase covers a less formal relationship: it may
mean only the man with whom the woman is currently living. Whoever it is who is
intended, it is fairly clear that the model-spell does not have in mind a maiden living at
home under the protection of her family.
It is tempting at this point to conclude that those who used the model-spell tended
to be men intent on making their own exclusive sexual property prostitutes or women
who were prepared to bestow their sexual favours on others. Nonetheless, proponents
of the thesis that marriage was the goal that users of such spells had in mind will point
to the wish in the model-spell, followed with variation in its adaptations, that the man
might be united to the woman for the rest of his or her life. In the spell from Arsinoe
(SupplMag 46), for instance, the man Posidonius wishes that the woman Heronous
may not be parted from him until death (K-CU dSiaxwpt-oTov fiov avTrjv Troiija^
Bavarov 25-6) and wishes that he may have her for all the time of his life (iV
avrr/v 'HpOvovv . . . VTTOT€Tayfievqv . . . Is TOV a-Travra XP°VOV TTJS ôifjs fiov 26-8).
In the model-spell, on the other hand, the wish is that the man's head, lips, and belly
may form a bond with the woman's, that his thighs may come close to hers, that his
black (that is, pubic hair) may be joined to her black and that she may perform the
deeds of love with him for all the time of life (/cat KefaXrjv K€<f>aXfj KoXX-qor) KCLL
XEi'Aea êiAeat avvaxf>r) Kai yaaripa yaarpl KoXXr/arj KOLI firjpov y.t]p<^> neXdaji KCLI
TO jU.eAavi avvdpixoarj xal rd d<f>po8toio.Ka eKTeXear) r/ Seiva jxer' ijxov, TOV Seiva,
els TOV dnavTa XP°VOV T 0 " aldivos PGM IV.400-6). The rather more chastely
expressed wishes of Posidonius might be construed to come to very much the same
18
That clause is reproduced in a simplified form in only two of the adaptations, but in them no
mention is made of any experience being had with the person called the ZSios avr/p (SupplMag
46.21,47.21). He presumably did not exist and was left out.
570 M. W. DICKIE
thing as the clause 'until death do us part' in the Christian marriage-ceremony, which
would, if true, point to its being marriage that Posidonius had in mind. It could be
argued, in any case, that there is nothing incompatible in longing for unceasing sexual
union and for marriage that ends only in death.
But to interpret either version of the spell as expressing a wish for marriage would
be a mistake. What the spell for Posidonius is intended to procure is that Heronous
shall have no life of her own apart from Posidonius and that she shall be utterly
subordinate to him sexually for the rest of her or his days. The crucial word here is
tnroT€Tayfievrjv (27). It also occurs in the same context in the binding-spell from
Antinoopolis or vicinity, but with the added qualification that the woman shall love
and crave the man and tell him all that she has in her mind (vnorerayfievrjv els rov
drravra xpovov rrjs £,a)?js fJ,ov <f>i\ovadv fj,€, epwa\a\v fj-ov, Xeyovaav ixoi a exî ev
vu> SupplMag 47.26-7).19 There is nothing touching about this last wish. The man is
looking for complete domination over the woman: he does not want her to think of
any other men. Any doubts about the connotations of the verb vnordaaeadai in erotic
defixiones should be put to rest by a defixio from Hadrumetum in Tunisia (third
century A.D.), in which a woman wants to make a man her partner in life and perhaps
in marriage and to subordinate him to her, loving her like a slave and desiring no
other woman or maiden than herself (Troir/aov avrov d>s SovXov avryi ipwvra
VTTOTeTaxOrjvai, p.-qhefxlav dXXt)\y\ yvvaiKa fxr)re napdevov e-7n6vfj.ovvra DTAud
271.44-5).20 As for the formula els rov diravra avrrjs xpovov, when used in
defixiones, it does not reflect love eternal, but a desire to make the spell effective for the
life of the interested parties21
Some of the spells in the formularies are for debauching married women, or women
in a permanent relationship with a man; others for making a woman forget her
husband or current companion, her parents, children, and brothers and sisters (PGM
IV2755-61, LXI.29-30). The assumption should not, however, be made that there was
a hard and fast dividing line between women who were still closely involved with their
families and women who were having relations with other men. A recipe at PGM
IV274O-58 commands that if the woman lies holding another man to her bosom, she
should thrust him away from her, having put all thought of children and parents from
her mind (PGM IV2756-8).22
The recipes in the formularies, therefore, do not on the whole seem to have been
written for men who had marriage in mind. Even the term ydpos in such recipes is
likely to refer not to marriage but to sexual union.23 In the formulary PGM V, for
example, there is a recipe with the phrase eav 8e yvvaiKa- 'omos fi-q yaftrjarj rov
Seiva -q heiva.' (330-1), whose context points to sexual union rather than marriage. It
would be extremely imprudent to deduce, from the stated goal of one erotic spell, the
unstated purpose of all others, but there is a revealing recipe at PGM XXVI. 134-60, to
" Cf. PGM VII.610: Si6 a£arf p.oi avrfjv <f>\eyop.fin)v, vnoraaaofievrjv.
20
On the spells known as imoraKTiKa, whose express purpose was to make others totally and
unquestioningly obedient, see T. Hopfner, Archiv Orientdlni 10 (1938), 135-46.
21
So P. Moraux, Une Deftxionjudicaire au Musee dIstanbul, Memoires de I'Academie royale de
Belgique, Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, 2nd ser. 54.2 (Brussels, 1960),
55-6. Cf. PGM Vll.650-1, XVII.15-16.
22
Cf. the papyrus erotic spell SupplMag 45 (Assiut in Upper Egypt fifth century AD.) with the
same wishes (lines 46-50), but not, however, the mention of children.
23
Cf. L.Robert, Collection Froehner I: Inscriptions grecques (Paris, 1936), 18, n. I; id., RPhilAX
(1967), 77-81; Emmanuel Voutiras, AI0NY20&QNT0Z FAMOI: Marital Life and Magic in
Fourth Century Pella (Amsterdam, 1998), 55-6.
make a woman suffer the usual torments, so that she may consent to love the man as
would a woman available for sex (iva poi iirivevori em eVcnpamK-jj <f>iXia PGM
XXXVI. 144-53).24 My suspicion is that we can see here the market at which the erotic
spells in the formularies were mainly directed: young men who wanted to monopolize
the sexual activities of the kind of woman with whom they would not have considered
entering into a formal contractual relationship.
To sum up, while it may be very difficult to say who the ideal user of the erotic
recipes in the formularies was, if such a creature existed, there is very little to support
the belief that it was either a lovelorn young man yearning for an unattainable maiden
or a calculating young man trying to secure a marriage with a girl of good family. Nor
do the formularies give the impression that their primary market was young men
attempting to seduce respectable women. No doubt a good deal of that went on, but
there is little evidence of it in the formularies. The formularies seem to look to sexually
active women who are either available or whom there is some hope of detaching from
their present attachments.
Who are these women and in what circles did they move in Late Roman Egypt?
Conditions and customs in Egypt at that time were very different from those that
prevailed in the small segment of Athenian society in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.
about which anything is known. Yet Winkler writes about the women who are the
objects of Egyptian erotic spells as if they were the carefully protected daughters of
well-to-do fourth-century Athenians or girls living in a village in Crete in the 1970s. He
has more or less unquestioningly assumed that Mediterranean social life is an
undifferentiated whole, unaffected by place or time.25 His picture of a homogeneous
whole, existing unchanged through time and space, seems to rest on a few studies in
English, principally of modern-day Greek village-communities, very often isolated in
the mountains. 26
It is dangerous to generalize about relations between men and women, but it is hard
to avoid the impression that in the larger cities of Egypt women were allowed a good
deal of freedom and that many women who were certainly not prostitutes enjoyed
sexual relations with men outside of marriage, an institution which in Egypt was in any
case somewhat more loose-knit than it was in classical Athens.27 That impression is
based on letters and legal documents. Sophronius in his hagiography of a harlot-saint
tells of the saint as a twelve-year old girl fleeing the home of her parents to come to
Alexandria, where she had lost her virginity and had for the next seventeen years
continued to let men enjoy her body. It was not that she needed to earn money with her
body—she often after all refused payment for the services she provided—lust and a
desire for pleasure were what motivated her {V. Mar. Aeg. 18; PG 87(3).3710-12).28 A
24
On the extension in meaning that iraipa undergoes in the Roman period, where it becomes
a general word for a prostitute, see S. Leontsini, Die Prostitution imfriihen Byzanz (Vienna, 1989),
25-6; Montserrat (n. 1), 107-8.
25
For criticism of Winkler's monolithic view of the Mediterranean, see C. Paglia, Sex, Art,
and American Culture (New York, 1992), 193-207.
26
The studies cited are: J. du Boulay, Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village (Oxford, 1974); id.,
'Lies, mockery and family integrity', in J. Peristiany (ed.), Mediterranean Family Structures
(Cambridge, 1976), 389-406; M. Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a
Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton, 1985); id., Anthropology 9 (1985), 25-44.
27
On sex, marriage, and divorce in Late Roman Egypt, see R. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity
(Princeton, 1993), 188-99; on marriage and divorce in Graeco-Roman Egypt, see Montserrat
(n. 1), 80-105.
28
On the genre to which the Life of Mary of Egypt belongs, see B. Ward SLG, Harlots of the
Desert (Oxford, 1987).
572 M. W. DICKIE
good deal of exaggeration on Sophronius' part has to be allowed for, but that should
not blind us to the very real possibility that he is describing a recognized pattern of
I
behaviour and that there were twelve-year-old girls who ran away from home to
Alexandria for adventure and who slept freely with men, not always taking payment
for their services. There were no doubt other types of sexually active women who were
neither prostitutes nor wives. Women who were divorced or separated from their
husbands will have been one; widows will have been another.
There were at least in the larger towns of Late Roman Egypt opportunities, both
public and private, for men and women to initiate sexual relations. Clement of
Alexandria assumes that grown women will drink in the company of men other than
those in their own immediate family and that when drinking from the small-mouthed
alabaster-vessel they favoured they will throw back their heads and excite the men
present by deliberately exposing their necks and as much of the rest of their bodies as
they can (Paed. 2.2.20-1,33, 1.168,176 Stahlin). Clement almost certainly describes
fashions and customs prevalent in Alexandria in his own day, which is to say in the
early third century A.D. The practices that he criticizes on the part of women are those
of the well-to-do. The freedoms allowed rich women were not necessarily those
granted other women in Alexandria, let alone women elsewhere in Egypt. Nor would it
be wise to argue that if rich women were granted freedoms, a fortiori poorer women
were granted still more. There are also indications in the spell-books that women,
perhaps not of the exalted status of the women Clement criticizes, did drink with men.
The recipes for the spell called a -rrorqpiov (PGM VII.385-9, 619-27, 643-51) or a
TTOTiafj-a (PGM VTI.969-71) or in one case a <j>i\rpov norifiov (PGM XIII.319-20)
presuppose men and women drinking together, since the spell is meant to be uttered by
the man over the cup that he is then to hand to the woman whose love he seeks. Other
spells were supposed to be intoned while kissing a woman, although the formularies do
not say exactly under what circumstances they were to be performed (PGM VII.405-6,
661-2); that it was in a situation of some intimacy goes without saying. It may be that
the women whom the authors of the drink-spells and the kissing-spells had in mind
were not exactly the same sort of women whose presence at symposia gave Clement
such cause for concern. What is clear at any rate is that in Egypt there were women who
were not segregated from men and that the magic employed by men against them or by
them against men was by no means always performed at a distance from the intended
victim. Both parties might know each other quite well and already be enjoying sexual
relations.
There were also opportunities for the sexes to meet in public places. There was, for
instance, the practice widespread throughout the Roman Empire of mixed bathing in
the public baths.29 Clement complains about well-to-do women bathing with men in
the public baths and picking them up there (Paed. 3.5,1.254-5 Stahlin). Because of the
opportunities for physical contact that the baths afforded, they were also suitable
locations for certain types of magic-working. Epiphanius, writing towards the end of
the fourth century A.D., recounts an incident in the baths at Gadara set in the reign of
Constantine. The protagonist in it is the youthful Jewish patriarch of Tiberias, who
had gone to Gadara from Tiberias with some companions to attend a festival. He had
29
Mixed bathing in Rome: Plin. //.AC 33.153; Quint. 5.9.14; SHA Hadr. 18.11 (Dio Cass.
69.8.2); SHA Alex. Sev. 24.2; naked mixed bathing in Rome: Mart. 3.51, 72 (cf. 11.47); mixed
bathing in unspecified locations: A. P. 9.621, 622, 783; mixed bathing naked, presumably in
Alexandria: Clem Alex. Paed. 3.5.32, 1.254-5 Stahlin. See further, Garrett G. Fagan, Bathing in
Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor, 1999), 26-9.
noticed in the baths an attractive young Christian woman. That had led to his delib-
erately rubbing his flank against hers in one of the chambers of the bath, probably the
sudatorium. The woman had crossed herself, and God, to show his miraculous power,
in spite of the sin the woman had committed in bathing in the company of men, had
caused the youth to fail in his attempt (Haer. 1.2.30.7).30 Some comments that
Epiphanius makes later about the protection the Sign of the Cross had afforded the
young woman against the magic-working of the youth and his companions show that
the youth was practising magic (Haer. 1.2.30.8).
Religious festivals would certainly have been one of the occasions on which young
men and women came into contact with each other. Some idea of what went on on
these occasions may be gained from a recently discovered sermon of Augustine in
which he looks back to the Carthage of his youth: men and women mixed quite freely
in all-night vigils; the young men took the opportunity afforded to make assaults on
the chastity of young women; they would contrive to rub themselves against the
women in the narrow and unsegregated passageway into the church; Augustine had
himself been party to such doings; he remembers the improper songs to be heard at the
feast of the Martyr Cyprian and the general wantonness of the proceedings.31 In the
Confessions, he is more specific and admits to having made successfully within the
walls of a church arrangements for a sexual assignation (3.3.5). The girls who came to
such vigils were not presumably the heiresses whom ambitious men sought to marry,
but girls of relatively humble status who were not necessarily the social equals of the
men who picked them up. These were the girls whom a man might make his concubine
and then send away as Augustine did when an advantageous marriage became
possible.32
EGYPTIAN DEFIXIONES
There are fifteen published erotic defixiones from Egypt directed by men at women.33
One man directs a defixio at another (PGM XXXIIa). Two women, on the other
hand, had erotic defixiones written for them to be directed at other women (PGM
XXXII, SupplMag 42). Finally, there are two defixiones directed by women at men
(PGM XV, XVI). There is no indication in any of the defixiones cast by men against
women that marriage is what the men had in mind. So far as can be judged, most of
the women at whom the spells are aimed are not closely guarded maidens, but are
sexually available, although the concern that PGM XVIIa displays with overcoming a
women's sense of shame suggests a woman with some pretensions to respectability.
There are undoubtedly more defixiones cast by men than by women, but what this
tells us is unclear, since the sample is not very large. For all we know, women may have
had a preference for forms of erotic spell that leave no trace in the material record, or
they may have lacked the confidence to approach the male scribes-cum-magicians
who supplied defixiones, or they may have lacked the financial means to pay for the
services of the scribes-cum-magicians. However that may be, what does emerge is that
women did engage in erotic magic and that those who composed spells for them used
the same formularies as were used for men.
30
For a description with illustrations of the baths at Hammat Gader (Gadara), see F. Yigiil,
Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 121-4.
31
F. Dolbeau, Augustin d'Hippone, Vingt-six sermons aupeuple d'Afrique (Paris, 1996), no. 5.5.
32
On concubinage, see P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (London, 1967), 62.
33
PGM XVIIa-c, XlXa, XXXIX, LXVIII; SupplMag 38, 39,40,41,43,44,45,46, 47,48,49,
50.
574 M. W. DICKIE
EROTIC DEFIXIONES OUTSIDE EGYPT
Hadrumetum
From a cemetery or cemeteries outside Hadrumetum in Tunisia there are eight or
possibly nine erotic defixiones?* In none of the six or seven spells directed at women
does marriage seem to be the object. The text of one of the two defixiones com-
missioned by women is quite informative {DTAud 271). The goal of the woman who
has commissioned the spell, more explicitly and more fully expressed as the spell
progresses, is to have the man filled with passion come to take her off to his house to
live with him, and to have him subordinated to her as her slave. The man was
obviously, in the eyes of the woman, something of a catch and sounds as though he
represented economic security for her, if she could get hold of him. She wants him to
be filled with passion and lust for her, not because she wants to have intercourse with
him, but because that will keep his attentions from wandering and keep him loyal to
her. In this she is quite unlike the men who have defixiones composed for them: their
wish is to have women come to them in a state of fervid desire, so that copulation may
take place forthwith. Her main goal is likely to have been economic security.
Women are again greatly outnumbered by men in the binding-spells from Hadru-
metum, but they do nonetheless cast such spells. Where the motive of the woman is
discernible, it is to have the man keep her in his house in a permanent relationship.
There is little evidence of such a desire on the part of the men who cast the spells.
Carthage
There are three erotic binding-spells from Carthage. One of them asks that Successa
be made to burn with love and desire for Successus {DTAud 227); from the names of
the parties it sounds as if the pair were slaves. A more complex spell calls on a demon
mighty amongst the Egyptians to bring a woman to a man to have intercourse with
him (DTAud230A,B). The demon is, in addition, asked to drive the woman from her
parents, her bedchamber, and from whomsoever she holds dear (a suis parentibus, a
suo cubile et aerie quicumque caws habes 10-11). There is not enough information
here with which to do much. The most interesting of the three is one that seeks to
have a woman respond to the love and desire that a man called Martialis feels for her
with a matching love and desire (DTAud 231). This is an extraordinary document,
because the man acknowledges the feelings he has for the woman he is trying to
attract. There are no parallels.
Macedonia
Because of the amount of archaeological activity that has taken place in recent times
within its borders, Macedonia now boasts an increasingly large dossier of
defixiones}5 Most of them are early and come from the fourth or third centuries B.C.
Two of them fall into the category of erotic magic. One of them was written for a
man and the other for a woman. The spell for the man, who was called Pausanias,
comes from a cemetery in Acanthus and belongs to the late fourth or early third
34
DTAud 264,265, 266,267, 268,269, 270, 271, 292?.
35
For a conspectus of the defixiones found so far in Macedonia, see Voutiras (n. 23), 1, n. 1.
36
century B.C. On one side of the tablet Pausanias binds down a woman called Sime,
so that she may be kept from the shrine of Athena and so that Aphrodite may not be
propitious to her, until she is prepared to do what he wants and embrace him
(KaraSei, /xe'xP1 <*v IJavaaviai irorjajj oaa Flavoavias jSouAerai. «ai /iijrt Upelov
Ad-qvaias aijiaaOai SvvaiTO, JXTJTI A<f>po8iTTj IXecos avrfi, irplv av IJavoaviav
evaxfj £i(i.r] Side A.2-6). On the other side, Pausanias binds down someone called
Ainis, who might be either a man or a woman, keeping him or her from religious rites
and from possessing anything beneficial, until he or she propitiates him (jrplv av
Tlavaavlav IXaar/Tai Atvis Side B.4-5). Pausanias almost certainly wishes Sime to
bestow her sexual favours on him. In view of the uncertainty that surrounds the sex
of Ainis it is rather less clear what Pausanias expects in that quarter. This is by some
considerable margin the earliest defixio designed to bring a woman to a man.37 Such
indications as there are would suggest that Sime was sexually experienced and
sexually available. Pausanias is, accordingly, neither a sexually obsessed youth trying
to seduce one of the local maidens, nor a man looking for a wife.
The other defixio comes from Pella and is to be dated to between 380 and 350 B.C.38
Its very early date and its location in a place that had hitherto seemed remote from the
main cultural currents of the Greek world gives it an unusual significance. The agent is
a woman asking that the marriage between another woman, Thetima, and a man,
Dionysophon, should not take place, that he should marry no other woman, widow, or
maiden, and that he should take no other woman to grow old with him than herself.
The spell ends by calling for a miserable death for Thetima and a blessed and
prosperous fate for the agent. What happened in Pella in the fourth century B.C. may
have been quite different from what went on in the rest of the Greek world at that time,
but the existence of the spell refutes the thesis that women did not in fact engage in
erotic magic.
Athens and mainland Greece in the fourth and third centuries B.C.
There are a considerable number of defixiones from Athens from the fourth century
B.C. directed at persons who run brothels or taverns or who work in these establish-
ments as prostitutes. It seems likely that the purpose of the persons commissioning
them was to eliminate competition. The example of these spells should make us
cautious about assigning a wholly or even partially erotic motive to spells that seek to
impose constraints on the sexual activities of a man and his partners. For example, an
Attic spell from the fourth century that attempts to prevent a man called Aristokudes
from achieving sexual union with any of the other women who are presented to him
or any boy may not have been composed by a woman torn by sexual jealousy, but by
one who did not wish her livelihood to be threatened or destroyed (Api[a]TOKv8ri KO.1
36
E. Trakosopoulou-Salakidou, ' KardSea/ioi a-no r-qv AKav6o\ in A.-Ph. Christides and
D. R. Jordan (edd.), FXtliaaa xau fj.aycta: Kei/xeva amo rr\v ap\ai6ri]Ta (Athens, 1997), 161,
no. 4; D. R. Jordan, 'Three curse tablets', in D. R. Jordan, H. Montgomery, and E. Thomassen
(edd.), Magic in the Ancient World, Proceedings of the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar
(Norwegian Institute, Athens 4-7 May 1997) (Bergen, 1999), 115-24 provides an improved text.
37
It effectively confutes the thesis tentatively propounded by C. A. Faraone, The agonistic
context of early Greek binding spells', in C.A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (edd.), Magika Hiera:
Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (New York, 1991), 15, and repeated more confidently at CP90
(1995), 4, n. 14 that defixiones intended to win the sexual favours of someone 'represent some
kind of hybrid flowering of a later, more complex magical tradition'. To sustain the thesis
Simaetha's KaraSeois of Delphis would also have to be left out of consideration.
38
E. Voutiras, REG 109 (1996), 678-82; id. (n. 23), 1-7.
576 M. W. DICKIE
r d j <f>a.vo(v)iAeva,s I avra) yvvaiKas I y^-nor' avrov yrj/xai OLXXTJV yvvai(Ka)

•nraiSa DTWti 78).39 It is even clearer in the case of spells which seek to put an end to
the relations enjoyed by a woman with more than one man that sexual jealousy is not
the primary motive. We have in an Attic spell that attempts to sever the relationship
enjoyed by a woman called Theodora with two named men and with any other men
she has dealings with a likely instance of motivation that is primarily economic at
work (DTAud68).40 It is to be surmised that the person responsible for the spell was a
courtesan jealous of her trade.
Spells that seek to put an end to the sexual activity of a woman and mention no man
create a strong presumption that the woman attacked made a living from selling her
body. There is a slightly less strong presumption that the person responsible for the
defixio is another woman whose livelihood is threatened. From Boeotia there is a spell,
perhaps of the Hellenistic period but certainly not later, in which an attempt is made to
put an end to the activities of a woman called Zoi's from Eretria. Since the intercourse
{awovalrj) in which Zois participates, her pleasure (r/8ov(r))) and bottom (nvyiov) are
singled out for mention and are consigned to Hermes and Ge along with her playing of
the kithara, there is little room for doubt that she was a prostitute-cum-entertainer.41
Another binding-spell from Boeotia that can hardly be later than the last-named spell
tries to drive asunder a man and a woman and then apparently a further man from the
same woman.42 The only reason for thinking that the focus of the spell is on the
woman is the mention in it of a second man. The name of the woman appears to be
Antheira, which again suggests a courtesan. Since what the spell principally seeks to
put a stop to is the love-making, kissing, intimate talk, and mutual affection
(a\\a\o(f>i\iav KTJ evvav KTJ XdXr/aiv KTJ <f>i\r)oiv A6) of the man and Antheira, the
very strong likelihood is that Antheira is a courtesan. The identity of the person
casting the spell is even more difficult to ascertain, but a woman is again the more
likely candidate.
Two spells of the third century A.D. from the Athenian Agora
Of the twelve spells written by the same hand found in a well in the south-western
corner of the Athenian Agora at least three are erotic.43 One of them (no. 7) seeks to
impose a chill on the sexual relationship between a man and a woman. The spell
affords no clue to the identity of the parties involved. Numbers 8 and 9 are more in-
formative in that respect: both spells are in essence directed at a woman called Juliana
and seek in one case (no. 8) to put an end to a sexual relationship between Juliana and
two men, and in the other (no. 9) to end a sexual relationship between Juliana and a
man called Polynikos. Since Juliana is to be found in an fpyaarrjpiov (no. 8.5), she is
a prostitute. The men whose affections for her the spells seek to cool are her clients or,
from their point of view, her lovers. It is a reasonable presumption that the motives of
39
Faraone (n. 37), 14 speaks of its having been written by a jealous wife or fiancee. He
translates it: '[I bind?] Aristocydes and the women who will be seen about with him. Let him not
marry another matron or maiden.' For the necessary corrections, see Voutiras (n. 23), 57 with n.
132.
40
For an improved text, see A lex sacra from Selinous, ed. M. H. Jameson, D. R. Jordan, and
R. D. Kotansky, Greek. Roman and Byzantine Monographs 7 (Durham, NC, 1993), 130.
41
E. Ziebarth, 'Neue Verfluchungstafeln aus Attika, Boioten und Euboia', SB phil.-hist. Kl.
33(1934), 1040.no. 22.
42
Ibid., 1041-2, no. 23.
43
D. R. Jordan, Hesperia 54 (1985), 205-55.
the person or less likely persons who cast spells nos. 8 and 9 were at least in part
economic.
CONCLUSION
This section of the discussion may be concluded with several observations: (i) the
authors of the formularies do not imagine that erotic magic is the exclusive preserve
of men; (ii) the physical record does attest to women engaging in erotic magic; (iii) if
we extend the notion of erotic magic to cover magic designed to further or impede
making a living from selling sexual favours, then there is even more evidence of
women being active in this sphere; (iv) the formularies and defixiones which survive
from Late Roman Egypt, the defixiones from Hadrumetum in the High Empire and
from Athens and Macedonia in the fourth and third centuries B.C. do nothing to
encourage either the belief that those who practised erotic magic were youths unable
to gain access to chaste and well-protected maidens or the thesis that erotic magic was
practised by men trying to better themselves by a good marriage; (v) the evidence
from Greece and Macedonia in the classical and early Hellenistic period suggests that
erotic magic, broadly understood, was practised just as much by women as by men;
the one man who can confidently be said to have practised erotic magic was interested
neither in marriage nor in winning a carefully protected maiden for himself, but in
getting a woman who sounds like a hetaera to submit to his desires.
Erotic magic in literature

The assertion that in Greek and Roman literature it is predominantly women who are
portrayed practising love-magic requires careful examination. We need to see whether
that statement is in fact true and then, if it is true, whether it means very much
anyway. The latter task calls for an analysis of who exactly the persons portrayed
performing love-magic are, what they are doing, and what the literary context of the
portrayal is. Basically, what has to be determined is whether the men who wrote about
women performing magic did so for ideological reasons or because they suffered from
some form of false consciousness, however construed, or because they had a
particular literary motive for doing so that varied from writer to writer. If literary
motives are at work, then the observation that it is exclusively women who are
portrayed performing erotic magic loses a good deal of its force. That is to say, if
there are a variety of reasons for portraying women practising love-magic, then no
single explanation should be advanced for all cases.
I give a list of the women who are shown in imaginative literature and drama either
practising love-magic or who are credited with an expertise in it followed by a list of
male experts and users.
Women expert in erotic magic:

The Nurse in Eur. Hipp.
The old women expert in incantations consulted by Simaetha at Theoc. 2.90-1.
Niko the Thessalian sorceress in A. P. 5.205.
Canidia and her companions in Hor. Epod. 5, 17 and in Sat. 1.8.
Acanthis in Prop. 4.5.
An unnamed saga in Tib. 1.2.
Dipsas in Ov. Am. 1.8.
578 M. W. DICKIE
The mother of Amyntas and Mycale in Nemes. Eel. 4.

Possibly Philaenis in Mart. 9.29.
Meroe at Apul. Met. 1.8-10, Pamphile at 2.5, 3.15-16, and the saga at 9.29-30.
The Syrian sorceress at Lucian, Dial.meret. A A.
Women who make use of, or are prepared to make use of, erotic magic, though not them-
selves experts:
Deianeira in Soph. Trach.
Phaedra in Eur. Hipp.
Simaetha in Theoc. 2.
An unnamed woman in Verg. Eel. 8.
Dido making a semblance of practising magic in Verg. Aen. 4.
The wife of the baker at Apul. Met. 9.29-30.
The courtesans Bacchis and Melitta in Lucian, Dial. Meret.
Men expert in erotic magic:
Jason at Pind. Pyth. 215-19.
Moeris at Verg. Eel. 8.
The Hyperborean magician at Lucian, Philops. 14.44
Calasiris, who, because he is an Egyptian prophetes, is wrongly imagined to be expert
in erotic magic (Heliod. Aeth. 3.16.2-3).
Men who make use of erotic magic, though not themselves adepts:
The lovelorn young man in Tib. 1.2.
Mopsus and Lycidas in Nemes. Eel. 4.
The rich young man at Lucian, Philops. 14.
The young Thessalian hero who approaches Calasiris, on the false assumption that as
an Egyptian priest he will be expert in erotic magic (Heliod. Aeth. 3.16.2-3).
There are indeed many more women than men on the list, though the ratio of
roughly three to one is not quite as startling as one has been led to believe. The picture
changes dramatically, however, if we compile a catalogue of the references to men and
women engaging in love-magic in non-imaginative literature.
Women who are adepts in the use of erotic magic:

The stepmother of the plaintiff who persuades Philoneos' concubine that she has
love-potions capable of restoring the affections of the latter (Antiph. 1.14,19).
Lais, who gave love-philtres to her lovers to maintain her sway over them (Ar. Plut.
302-9 with E ad 303).
Ninos, who, according to an ancient commentator, was accused by Menecles of
making love-philtres for young men (Z in Dem. 19.281).
The assertion in a declamation that the whole life of a prostitute is consumed in
veneficium ([Quint.] Decl. maior. 14.5).
44
I have excluded from the list of men expert in erotic magic the Syrian stranger (Aoovpios
£eivos) from whom Simaetha has learned the KCLKO. âpjuaica with which she threatens to break
her erstwhile lover Delphis, if her KardSeafioi do not bring him back to her (Theoc. 2.159-62).
There is nothing to suggest that he is supposed, as Winkler ([n. 1], 228, n. 31) believed, to be
expert in erotic magic and more knowledgeable than the old women from whom Simaetha had
sought help.
The old woman from whom a young man accused of giving a prostitute a
love-philtre acquires that substance ([Quint.] Decl. Min. 385.6).
The old women whom young men consult about love-magic (Philostr. V.A. 7.39).
The old women found beside altars who teach rich women about love-philtres and
incantations (Clem. Alex. Paed. 3.4.28,1.252 Stahlin).
This list could be expanded considerably, if we were to add to it the references in the
Church Fathers and in John Chrysostom, in particular, to the use of erotic magic on
the part of prostitutes.
Women who make use of erotic magic or avail themselves of the services of magicians
for amatory purposes, but who are not themselves expert in the use of such magic:
The concubine who is persuaded by a wife that she has love-philtres in her possession
capable of restoring a man's affections (Antiph. 1.14,19).
A woman called Numantina who was tried in A.D. 22/23 for having used love-magic
against her former husband (Tac. Ann. 4.22).
Caesonia, the wife of Caligula, who by giving her husband an amatorium made him
mad (Suet. Cal. 50).
The advice that Plutarch proffers women in general against using îXrpa and other
forms of yorjreCa to entrap men; he argues that men so ensnared have their senses
damaged (Coniug. Prae. 139a).
The rich Macedonian woman who took Alexander of Abunoteichos and his
companion into her entourage, so that she might attract lovers (Lucian, Alex. 6).45
Men expert in erotic magic:

The unspecified men in Rome who sell Thessalian philtres and incantations to
women (Juv. 6.610-20).
The doctor who had Alexander of Abunoteichos as his apprentice and Alexander
himself (Lucian, Alex. 5-6).
The educated Greeks who are hired men in rich Roman households (Lucian, De
Merc. Cond. 40).
The male magicians who help young men to perform love-magic (Philostr. V.A. 7.39).
The mendicant-priests who along with old women are the source of instruction in
love-magic for rich Alexandrian women (Clem. Alex. Paed. 3.4.29,1.252 Stahlin).
The young man, apparently of good family, from Gaza who makes his way to
Memphis to receive instruction in magic at the shrine of Asclepius there, so that he
may return to Gaza to cast a spell on a girl who has resisted his approaches
(Hieron. V Hilar. PL. 23.39).
An Egyptian magician who teaches Appion an erotic incantation to help him win the
woman for whom he longs {Clem. Horn. 5.4).
Men who resort to erotic magic, though not necessarily adepts:

The young men for whom Ninos was said to make love-philtres (S in Dem. 19.281).
45
She did so, although she was a bit over the hill, because she still wanted to draw men (i^wpov
fiev. ipdopiov Se en etvai f}ov\ofievT]v). Lucian puts the same expression into the mouth of
Melitta the hetaera who is trying to find an old women who knows how to perform incantations
that make women desirable to men: iira&ovoai KO.1 epaofiiovs noiovoai (Dial. Meret. 4.1).
580 M. W. DICKIE
Callisthenes, the freedman of Lucullus, who gave Lucullus a love-potion, so that his
love for him might be the more intense (Nep. fr. 1 Malcovati apud Plut. Luc.
43.1-2; cf. Plut. Plin. H.N. 25.25).
The young men who are advised by Ovid that resorting to erotic magic is wrong (Ars
Am. 2.99-106).
The young man accused by a pimp of having given an amatorium to a meretrix that
he had acquired from an old woman ([Quint.] Decl. Min. 385).
The young men who both speak to old women about love-magic and get practical
help from male magicians in engaging in it (Philostr. V.A. 7.39).
Heresiarchs and their followers (Iren. Haer. 1.7.4,16.3).
Appion, obsessed with desire for a woman, who receives both practical help from a
Egyptian expert in magic and learns his spell {Clem. Horn. 5.3).
Philometor, who used magic against the philosopher Sosipatra (Eunap. VS. 6.9).
Dissolute Jewish youths from Tiberias who practised love-magic against respectable
women (Epiph. Haer. 1.2.30.7-8, P.G .41.416-20).
The Syrian who conjured up a demon to take possession of a girl, only to be exposed
by the Holy Macedonius (Theodoret. Hist. Relig. 13.10-12)
A law-student in Beirut at the end of the fifth century A.D. who tries with the help of
his associates to seduce a respectable Christian woman by magic (Zacariah, Vita
Severi, P.O. 2.62-3).
The list could be expanded, but by this point it should be clear that counting heads is
a fruitless exercise. There is no evidence of an assumption on the part of non-
imaginative male writers that erotic magic was the special preserve of women and
that it was only practised by love-lorn females. Young men are believed to engage in it
in their pursuit of young women. They get help both from old women and male
magicians. No mention is made of older men resorting to such magic. Women are
also believed to have recourse to it, but they are either prostitutes or bored married
women or perhaps widows. They, too, use either male or female experts. The one class
of women which is not generally credited with practising magic is that of respectable
unmarried girls. There is, accordingly, a striking asymmetry: prostitutes and married
women practise magic on their own behalf; but only unmarried males engage in it.
This may have been broadly speaking what happened, but the true picture can hardly
have been so tidy.
It looks, accordingly, as if the question that has to be asked is not why male writers
imagine that only lovelorn women resort to erotic magic and have consequently chosen
only to depict such women practising magic, but why in imaginative writing it is mainly
women who are depicted using love-magic. Before we address that question, it would
be prudent to look more closely at the instances on which the generalization has been
based as well as others by which it might be bolstered to see what kind of love-magic it
is in which women are portrayed engaging, what their motives are for resorting to it,
and whether they have scruples about using it or not.
Deianeira in Sophocles' Trachiniae is hardly a love-lorn maiden resorting to erotic
magic, but a married woman about to lose her husband to a younger woman. She uses
what she imagines is a love-ointment only with the greatest reluctance and has strong
moral scruples about what she does (582-7). Euripides' Phaedra, no maiden either, is
certainly wracked by the agonies of unrequited love, but she does not at all like the
suggestion of the Nurse that love-philtres and incantations should be used against
Hippolytus and is extremely unhappy at being pushed into using them (Hipp. 486-9).
Dido in Aeneid 4 is most definitely lovelorn. She has, accordingly, little difficulty in
convincing her sister that the measures she is taking are designed to draw Aeneas back
to her by magical means, but it is surely significant that to give verisimilitude to what
she does she feigns reluctance at having to follow such a course of action (testor, cara,
deos et te, germana, tuumque dulce caput, magicas invitam accingier artis 492-3).
Simaetha, on the other hand, in Theocritus 2 displays no such scruples: when she first
falls for Delphis, she approaches old women expert in performing incantations for
help (91); then when he deserts her, she uses a binding-spell to try to bring him back
(yvv Se viv €K Ovewv Kara8-qaofj.ai 10). The unnamed countrywoman in Vergil's
eighth Eclogue, who has been deserted by the man she thinks of as her husband, is not
credited with having any scruples about resorting to magic to bring the man back
(64-7).
In sum, the lovelorn woman who turns to magic to win the man she longs for
certainly exists in literature, but there are only two straightforward examples of the
type: Phaedra in the Hippolytus and Simaetha in Theocritus 2. Almost all of the other
women in the catalogue use magic, because they have been deserted by their lovers,
either to get them back or out of vengeance. They are: Deianeira in Trachiniae;
Simaetha; the woman in Vergil, Eclogue 8; Dido in the Aeneid; Canidia in Horace,
Epode 5; the saga in Apuleius who keeps an inn; and Melitta and Bacchis in Lucian.
There is one predatory married woman: Pamphile in Apuleius. There are also old
women in the Roman elegists who perform erotic magic on behalf of others. Overall,
then, the lovelorn woman who uses magic to win the affections of a man turns out to
be a not particularly commonfigure.The lovelorn men who have recourse to sorcery
to win the women for whom they long are no fewer in number—in fact, three: Tibullus
in 1.2; the rustic lovers in Nemsesianus 4; and the young man in Lucian's Philopseudeis.
It is conspicuously the case that many of the women who are portrayed engaging in
love-magic are prostitutes, ex-prostitutes, or incipient prostitutes. To this category
belong Simaetha, Canidia, the sagae in the Roman elegists, the saga in Apuleius'
Metamorphoses who runs an inn, and Melitta and Bacchis in Lucian. None of these
women have the slightest scruple about having recourse to sorcery. Respectable women,
on the other hand, are very reluctant to have anything to do with magic-working:
Deianeira, Phaedra, and Dido all express distaste for the course of action they are
forced to follow or feign. The conclusion to be drawn is clear: prostitutes were at
various times and places believed to practise magic freely, whereas in Augustan Rome
and in Athens in the fifth century respectable women were imagined to be extremely
unwilling to engage in such practices.
I turn now to the question of the motives writers have for portraying women
practising erotic magic. Those who subscribe to the view that there was a systematic
distortion on the part of male writers and poets of the role played by women in erotic
magic are in some sense committed to the theory that authors using very different
literary forms all had the same motive for writing about female love-magic. In tragedy,
for instance, the theme of magic going wrong and leading to unintended and
disastrous results lends itself to a form of drama based on the assumption that human
beings very often take decisions that may have catastrophic consequences for
themselves. Nor is any allowance made for the possibility that female magic-working
may be a natural part of the subject-matter peculiar to the literary form. If in fact
prostitutes and ex-prostitutes form part of the cadre from which in many ancient
communities magic-workers were drawn, it is not surprising that they should also be
presented in literary portrayals as actively engaged in magic and in erotic magic in
582 M. W. DICKIE
46
particular. The Roman elegists, for example, write as if they were young men deeply
involved with courtesans and their world. That they should have encounters with lenae
and sagae who practise magic hardly calls for comment. Nor is it surprising that a
writer in the Greek east in the second half of the second century A.D. who invents
conversations between prostitutes, partly inspired by Greek New Comedy, should
make erotic magic one of the topics that engages the attention of his characters.
This leaves us with the women in Apuleius' Metamorphoses who practise erotic
magic on their own behalf: Meroe, who keeps a tavern; and Pamphile, the wife of
Lucius' host in Hypata in Thessaly. They should not be treated separately from the
other women in the Metamorphoses whose spectacular and horrific magic-working
provide a good deal of the excitement in that work. The fact that Lucius the narrator
has experience of female magic-working and hears from others about further instances
of the same activity has a simple explanation: the tale is set in Thessaly, a land notor-
ious for its sorceresses.
Meroe and Pamphile are, in other words, one manifestation of a phenomenon wide-
spread in Thessaly, female magic-working. They come, however, in forms recognizable
to the Graeco-Roman world: the old prostitute who uses her knowledge of magic to
take revenge on lovers who have rejected her or spoken ill of her, and the rich woman
who practises magic in her pursuit of lovers. Both in Italy and in the Greek-speaking
east, taverns were well known as centres of prostitution.47 Many of the women who ran
taverns and used them as a base for procuring will themselves have been prostitutes;
Meroe belongs to the type. Meroe and Panphile are, in sum, stock-figures but based on
a reality; their magic-working has been greatly exaggerated by Apuleius or his source
to make it suitably frightening for a Thessalian setting.
In sum, the male poets, playwrights, and novelists who write about women
practising erotic magic do so for a variety of reasons. The reasons that can be discerned
sufficiently explain why the writers portray women practising erotic magic. Not only
do writers have no one reason for depicting women performing erotic magic; the
woman portrayed exhibit very different attitudes to such magic: some have no scruples
about having recourse to it; others feel some anguish at being forced by circumstances
to employ it. There is, furthermore, no one literary form in which erotic magic is
portrayed. It is, accordingly, difficult to believe that one single factor is responsible for
the choice of female erotic magic-working as a topic for literary portrayal.
ADDENDUM: SEXUAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE USE OF EROTIC

SPELLS
In a recent study of erotic magic Faraone maintains that men cast spells to arouse
ipws in women, while women cast spells to retain or restore affection and esteem.48
The latter category of spells are said to be called <f>iXrpa or âpiâia, since they seek
to secure <j>i\ia and to increase allure; the former are known as dywyal or
<f>iXrpoKaTdheatJiOL. The two categories of spell in Faraone's view were thought to be
quite distinct in their nature: those arousing epws were seen 'as a specialized exten-
46
On prostitution in antiquity the fundamental studies are H. Herter, RAC 3 (1957), s.v. Dime
cols. 1154-1213, and id., JAC 3 (1960), 70-111, esp. 104 for magic and prostitution; on
prostitution in the early Byzantine period there is Leontsini (n. 24). On prostitution and magic,
see now Voutiras (n. 23), 56, n. 131.
47
Cf. T. Kleberg, Hotels, restaurants, cabarets, dans I'antiquite romaine, Bibliotheca Ekmania 61
(Uppsala, 1957), 89-91; V Vanoyeke, La prostitution en Grece et a Rome (Paris, 1990), 105-10.
4g
C. A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge, MA, 1999).
sion of cursing rituals and philia spells as a subcategory of healing and protective
rites'. 49
Did these distinctions exist? Erotic defixiones and the spells in the formularies
labelled dycuyai or <f>i\TpoKaTa.8eofj,oi characteristically seek to induce both epws and
<f>iXia.50 A n d <j>CXrpa also seek t o induce epws; cf. the Nurse's <f>lXrpa fioi deXKT-qpia
epa>Tos at Eur. Hipp. 509-10.51 It is natural then for a formulary to speak about (friXrpa
ipwTiKa (PGMXll.301-6). Not only women but also men use <f>(Xrpa or in their Latin
form amatoria, and not just to secure the affections of an existing partner, but to win
new lovers.52 Pliny the Elder, for example, mentions amongst the substances supposed
to function as amatoria" two specifically said to be effective in attracting women.54
Finally, a wedge cannot be driven between spells designed to increase the x&Pls of a
person and those whose aim it is to arouse epcus. One of the feats that Lucian's
magicians profess to be able to perform is to instil x°-PLS m matters of epcos
(vviaxvovfievwv Kai xdpiras em TOIS epwriKots Alex. 5, De Merc Cond. 40).
In the formularies the faXTpoKardSeofios or dyaty-q and the foXrpov have a good
deal of overlap in the forms of expressions they employ. The most striking instance of
the pattern is to be seen in a <f>iXrpov eTraivferov at PGM LXI.15-19 that seeks to
impose exactly the same burning sensations, the same vertiginous feelings, and the
same inability to eat and drink on its victim for exactly the same end as do dywyal and
(jyiXTpoKardheafAoi. That is hardly surprising, since a (jyiXTpoKaTaSea/xos is only a
specialized form of a faXrpov.55 If a compiler of a formulary in his desire to impart a
pseudo-precision to the spells he describes were to give a name to the procedures
followed by Simaetha in trying to draw an errant lover to herself, he would surely have
called them a ifiXTpoKardSeafios. That is in effect the way in which Simaetha herself
describes what she does: vvv pev TOIS <f>iXrpois KaraS-qaofi-ai (Theoc. 2.159). The
conclusion to which all of this points is that if there is any generic name for an erotic
spell, it is <f>iXrpov and that dywyai and îXTpoKardSeafioi, to the extent that they are
to be distinguished, are species of the genus <f>iXrpov.56
University of Illinois at Chicago MATTHEW W. DICKIE
49
Ibid., p. 30.
50
QiXTpoKardSeonoi and dyaiyai: PGM IV.351-2, 396, 1502, 1533-5, 2910, 2931-33,
XVI.3-8, XXXVI.81,147,151-52; defixiones: XIXb.53-4, XXXVI.81.
51
Eur. Hel. 1102-4, Polyaenus, Strat. 8.38.1, Joseph A.J. 17.61-62, Ach. Tat. 4.15.4, 5.25.3
with 22.2, Porph. Abst. 2.41-2, Ioh. Chrys. Horn in I. Cor. 7:2 PG 51.216.
52
Men using îXrpa: E in Dem. 19.281, IG X.2.1.1026 = GVI1093; LSAM 20.15-22; Iren.
Haer. 1.7.4, 16.3; Ach. Tat. 4.15.4; Porph. Abst. 2.41-42; Ov. Ars Am. 2.105-6; [Quint.] Decl.
Min. 385.6. Winning new lovers: Ach. Tat. 5.25.3; Clem. Alex. Paed. 3.28.4. In the formularies
under the rubric îXrpov the masculine gender is employed in prescribing how the spell is to be
employed, which at the very least means that the use of such spells by men was envisaged (PGM
VII.450,463, 661, XIH.237-9).
53 H
H.N. 25.25, 160,27.57, 125,28.34, 101,106, 30.141. H.N. 28.101, 106.
55
So T. Hopfner, 'Philtron', RE 29 (1941), 208. The term faXTpoKardSeopos has the same
form as <j>iXTponoaip.ov (Cyran. 1.18,22, 2.2,33, 3.7,37,38 Kaimakis), which is to say a <j>iXrpov
-rroTifwv (PGM XIII.319). A <f>iXTpoirooip.ov may be used by a man to arouse Zpcos in a girl
(Cyran. 1.18 Kaimakis); tfriXrpoTroTiofia employing the testicles of a fox are effective against
women when the left testicle is used and against men when the right is used (Cyran. 2.2
Kaimakis); much the same is true with the dove: the testicles work against women; the womb
against men (Cyran. 3.37 Kaimakis).
56
In writing this paper I have incurred certain debts: to J. G. Howie and Alexander MacGregor
for forcing me to clarify my thinking and for criticizing many infelicitous sentences; to David
Jordan not only for performing these services, but for his generosity in putting his great
knowledge of Greek and Roman magic at my disposal.

Who Practised Lovemagic in Classical Antiquity and in The Late Roman World

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Classical Quarterly 50.

2 563-583 (2000) Printed in Great Britain 563

WHO PRACTISED LOVE-MAGIC IN CLASSICAL

THE TESTIMONY OF THE MAGICAL PAPYRI

AT WHAT WOMEN WERE EROTIC SPELLS IN THE

r d j <f>a.vo(v)iAeva,s I avra) yvvaiKas I y^-nor' avrov yrj/xai OLXXTJV yvvai(Ka)

Erotic magic in literature

Women expert in erotic magic:

The mother of Amyntas and Mycale in Nemes. Eel. 4.

Women who are adepts in the use of erotic magic:

Men expert in erotic magic:

Men who resort to erotic magic, though not necessarily adepts:

ADDENDUM: SEXUAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE USE OF EROTIC

University of Illinois at Chicago MATTHEW W. DICKIE

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